A geek's blog about nerdy stuff, with an array of musings on SEO & web design, Barnsley based but internationally read. Honest.
SEO, Social Media & Web Tidbits
Search Engine Optimisation blog posts by The Design Loft
Google Instant: SEO Is Dead, Long Live SEO!
Sep 13th
Last week Google announced the launch of Google Instant.
Unless you’ve been blissfully ignorant of all things online then you’ll know what that means:
Search as you type. It’s a simple and straightforward idea—people can get results as they type their queries. The Official Google Blog
Sweet idea right? Right!
Google Instant – SEO Impact…I’ve almost been reserving judgment on this whilst I ponder it – my initial reaction was “Oh crap, better look at a new career” and then it developed into “No no, hang on; this could be good for us SEO folk“.
So, why the juxtaposition?
Well initially the thought occurred to More >
Google Offers Insight Into What Makes A Great Backlink
Jun 23rd
Hey all, just a quickie today – but something potentially very valuable.
Google has posted a very interesting article on their Webmaster Central blog regarding what makes a good quality backlink.
The usual fare is present about directories not having the weight they once did, not creating spammy content and so on. But one of the main highlights of the post is that Google points to “community involvement” which seems to indicate a nod to social media.
With the impact of social media on SEO being closely scrutinised, I wonder whether this will provide a clear view point on it, or at least go More >
How Google Synonyms Are Working More And More Effectively
Jun 18th
As a search marketer, Google synonym functionality poses some interesting problems. We optimise for keywords that we’ve strongly researched, and try to include as many quality variants that we can without sacrificing usability and copy quality.
However, we can’t really cover every base; there are always keywords providing entry points to your site that you won’t have optimised for; usually longer tailed phrases.
As we know, Google is always looking to provide the most relevant results to its users and searchers, and to facilitate this further they’ve been doing work for years on how their algorithms deal with synonyms:
An irony of computer science More >
Google Now Checks Your Page’s Load Speed When Determining Your Search Rankings
Apr 14th
Well we knew it was coming didn’t we; last week the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that Google will now take into account your web page load speed when determining your search rankings.
Notice however that the Google guys & gals state that this currently only applies to 1% of search queries sent through Google.com – a little less urgency on checking your site than you might think, but still; getting your website upto speed (pun alert!) is a wise move considering Google rolls out changes like this to it’s data centre worldwide fairly sporadically.
How quick is your site?!
More >“Web Design Barnsley” Term Takes A Beating In The Search Results Thanks To Google Caffeine
Apr 12th
Google Caffeine is being rolled out to various data centres in Google’s arsenal progressively and some search marketers may see significant changes to their rankings, and their client’s rankings over the coming months.
The “Web Design Barnsley” test.I’ve been keeping an eye on this using the keyphrase “web design Barnsley” via the Google.co.uk (The Web) engine. The reason being, it’s a term that we used to optimise for, don’t anymore but still (used to) rank well for.
We were consistently number 3 in this search without spending any real time optimising. Now when I search we appear at number 7…
On the More >
Copywriting For SEO – Should You Outsource?
Apr 9th
A Look At Copywriting For SEO & Why Outsourcing May Be The Way For You
Copywriting for SEO is an often overlooked part of web design projects. This occurs for various reasons; time constraints, undervaluing of it’s importance, a lack of understanding of what to look for when copywriting for SEO, budget constraints and much more.
Any good search marketer will tell you that copywriting for SEO is one of the most important aspects of any web site project and is the backbone of all successful online marketing projects.
Copywriting For SEO – To Outsource Or To Try It Yourself?So, as a designer looking More >
Top SEO Blogs That Every Web Professional Should Know About
Apr 7th
Top SEO Blogs are hard to find – there are of course thousands of blogs looking at SEO, web design and all manner of online marketing; but the top SEO blogs are really the cream of the crop – they give valuable and, more importantly, timely information regarding all manner of search marketing.
I do a alot of reading and I came across a fantastic list of the top SEO blogs over at TopRank (BigList). It’s a comprehensive list sorted into alphabetical order, some well known ones and some not so; I particularly like the brilliantly named I’m Not A Doctor – Stephen Peron has a More >
